There is a difference between loving the world for the world’s wealth’s
sake, and loving the world for the sake of humanity. There is often
this difference between the patriotism of men. Some patriots love the
surface of the world where they are located far more than they love
the people who share it with them. Some patriots love the wealthy of
their neighboring countries, while they are totally indifferent towards
the toiling poor of that same country. In America the people who love
humanity for humanity’s sake, give their sympathies to the plundered and
outraged peasantry of Russia, while those who love the world for wealth’s
sake give their sympathies to Emperor Nicholas and the parasitical
royalty of that unhappy country.
This is why the United States are not unanimously in sympathy with the
oppressed people of all other countries—the reason why the people of
this country are not unanimously in sympathy with the toilers of our own
land—the difference between loving the world’s wealth, and the world’s
people. “Love your neighbor as yourself,” is possible only where worldly
interests are mutual and agreeable. Where two men are striving for the
dirty dollar in sight, love is sure to dodge out of sight and silently
steal away.
Even where men love the world for humanity’s sake, there is a
difference in the intensity of that love. Some men love with a hopeful
optimistical fervor, dreaming of a day when there shall be no oppression
or plundering of the weak by the powerful. They see the millennium of
earthly tranquillity and peace in the near future, when all men shall be
brothers, and co-operation shall take the place of bitter competition,
and motherhood and childhood shall be the great care and protection of
the nation, and no one shall go to bed and cry themselves to sleep to
forget the pangs of hunger and drown the memory of personal wrongs.
In most cases these hopeful altruists never suffered real hunger or
bitter wrongs. They have always had enough of the world’s material
wealth to drive the wolf of hunger away from their door, and only see
the real poor through their dreams. Once in my life I cried for bread
when there was not a crumb in my mother’s house, nor even a single penny
to buy bread. It was only for one day, but the horror of that one day
pictured poverty to my youthful mind in all its horrible and unrelenting
want and squalor. And the old gloom-blistered memory of that one day of
unsatisfied hunger haunts me still, like the recollections of the most
poignant pain.
I firmly believe that that recollection of absolute poverty in my
childhood days is what makes my love for humanity so hopeless and
moist with despondent tears. I can not even dream of a day when love
and justice will rule the world. Greed, greater than all else, human
greed predominates over all the world. “For what will a man not give in
exchange for his own life?” This can be carried still lower and made to
read, “For what will a man not sacrifice for his own comfort?” And when
it comes to a sacrifice, who so easy to offer up as the “helpless poor?”
Abraham hadn’t the remotest idea of offering himself up on the altar he
had built. Helpless Isaac would have been the victim, had not the more
helpless ram appeared tangled in the bushes, and was substituted for the
lad.
The primitive originators of the sacrificial altar had only the weak and
helpless and defenseless in mind as the intended sacrifice to their God.
The innocence of the lamb and the dove did not appeal to their calloused
hearts. They were intent on saving themselves, even though the whole
world must be sacrificed.
That spirit is still prevailing where the weak and the strong meet in
the struggle for existence, and the weak and innocent do not appeal to
sympathetic hearts when they ask for mercy. The business and commercial
altars must have a sacrifice for the benefit of the strong. This picture
is always before me. My love for the world is like the love of a
despondent mother for her sick child.